Ben Prime
by Codecrash
Summary: Hex strikes, Ben strikes back, things get interesting.


I don't own Ben 10 or any of the characters therein. I just wrote this for the sake of entertainment alone.

Ben Prime

There are many ways to begin a story just as there are many ways to end it. But what if the end was just the beginning made anew?

Like many stories that begin this way this story begins at where a life had come to end, to be more specific the grave where Julie Yamamoto had come to rest. It was there that kneeled her former boyfriend Ben Tennyson.

While paying his respects he carefully adjusted the vase of fresh flowers he had brought to her grave so they wouldn't be struck down by the passing wind.

"SHIP!" a small metallic voice cheered in approval by his foot.

Ben looked down and smiled at the mini Galvanic Mechamorph named Ship that had once been Julie's pet who Ben had inherited.

Ben sighed and smiled at the small black and green alien as he petted it gently. "Yeah she would have loved them," he agreed.

He looked at the grave once more and sighed. One of Ben's worst fears when he had begun dating Julie was her death at the hands at one of his many enemies to get back at him, and even though that had never happened he had still lost her anyways.

He recalled how it had happened during the start of their senior year, the day when Julie had been killed on the way home from school.

Ben's fingers clenched into fists as the memory of that day flashed through his mind.

It hadn't been some alien or megalomaniac, or catastrophe but a damn drunk behind the wheel of a pickup truck.

When he had found out it had taken every ounce of his willpower not to go alien on the drunk bastard who had miraculously survived the crash without so much as a scratch. But he had known that Julie wouldn't have wanted him to use the Ultimatrix for revenge.

Ship on the other hand hadn't been so honor bound, when the little guy had found out it had taken just about everyone in the Alien Force and all Ben's aliens to calm the little guy down. Unfortunately in doing so there had been massive collateral damage to the jail where they man had been staying before trial, Ships 'big mode' – as the Alien Force had dubbed it – was a force to be reckoned with. It had taken nothing less than the full force of Way Big to hold the mini Mechamorph back. Hard to believe such a little guy could be so dangerous.

Ben felt a twinge of guilt as he refocused back on the present. Over a year had passed since then, he was now nineteen and as much as he hated to admit it he had begun to miss Julie less and less. When he had mentioned this to Grampa Max, his grandfather had told him that it was just him beginning to move on with his life, just as Julie would have wanted. Deep down Ben knew his grandfather was right but nevertheless couldn't help but still felt guilty about it.

Recently he'd begun dating, but as of yet hadn't found anyone who was girlfriend material, not that he stuck around long enough to know, most of the time his dates were interrupted by his other life's duties. Of course he was still hesitant about looking for a relationship, on account his enemies might use her for revenge on him.

Just then his cell phone rang. "Hello Ben 10 world's greatest hero speaking," he answered.

"Not a good time for modesty Ben!" his cousin Gwen shouted over what sounded like crashes of lightning and explosions. "Hex is in town and he's going after the armory, we could really use some help here!"

Ben's eyes went wide. The armory was a secret underground storage facility where they stored confiscated alien artifacts they had set up in town. All of which was in the process of slowly being relocated because a construction company had begun building an apartment building on the vacant lot it had been under. There was no telling what kind of havoc could be unleashed if anyone got a hold of the items inside, let alone Hex. "We're on our way," he replied before pocketing the phone.

"SHIP!" Ship exclaimed as he began transforming himself into his 'big' mode a medium sized spaceship with enough alien firepower to turn earth's moon to dust within seconds.

Ben quickly got inside and strapped himself in.

"SHIP!" Ship proclaimed with a much deeper voice as his thrusters sent them rocketing towards the city.

Having absorbed the steel from a nearby bulldozer which had just tried to eat him, Kevin ripped a lamppost out of the ground and smashed it into the side of animated machine knocking it onto its side. "How much longer is he going to take!" he shouted to his fiancé Gwen who was fighting a giant three headed dragon.

She blasted the monstrosity with a huge explosion of pink energy from her hands. "He's got Ship with him so about a minute or so!" she shouted back.

The construction site around them was in pandemonium, it was as if reality itself had gone on every kind of mind altering drug. There was no rhyme or reason to anything. Inanimate objects came alive, mythical creatures appeared and people were being turned to stone as the demented laughter from the source of it all echoed around them.

Hex, master magician surveyed his work as he floated above it all. "Try as you might there is no stopping me!" he proclaimed as the alien artifacts began floating up towards him from the chasm his powers had made for him. "The mystic talismans within the armory are mi-!"

Suddenly he was struck by a massive blast of green energy that sent him careening to the ground with such force that his impact made a giant crater.

All eyes looked up to see Ben standing atop Ship with his hand pointed towards the downed wizard. Thanks to the Ultimatrix, whose emblem was now upon his chest, Ben had changed from human to the dark greenish almost black humanoid with glowing green eyes and free flowing green energy emanating from his head like hair. He had transformed into one of the most powerful of his aliens, the Anodite form he'd dubbed Manafest; a form which was only outclassed by Alien X.

Unfortunately while ideal for dealing with magic wielders such as Hex, like Alien X Manafest's power also came with a serious drawback, because of the pure raw power this hero housed Ben could only use it for a period of little more than ten minutes before the awesome power overwhelmed him, stripping away his humanity, his personality, and most importantly his sanity just like Gwen had almost lost hers when she'd accessed her full Anodite power during the Highbreed invasion. Not that it mattered of course, because _this_ was going to be quick.

"Okay one, do you want to just make this easier for both of us and do this the easy way and avoid your impending smack-down?" he asked as Ship descended towards the villain. "And two, don't you guys ever get tired of the monologing shtick?"

Angrily Hex grabbed hold of the nearest alien tech that looked like a weapon and fired at Manafest and Ship.

Manafest instantly intercepted the beam with a blast of intense green mana energy. As the two beams collided there was a massive boom as an intense swirling energy vortex was suddenly given birth by the two colliding forces.

With unbridled force rivaling the gravity of a black hole Ship and Ben were suddenly swallowed by the shifting anomaly just before it suddenly self-destructed in an explosion of immense energy.

"NO!" Gwen screamed as the light from the explosion faded.

Hex laughed in delight at the unexpected turn of events.

"Shut up!" Kevin snarled as he slammed his steel covered fist into the laughing maniacs face shattering Hex's jaw like it had been made of glass and knocking him out cold.

No sooner had the man had been knocked out than reality suddenly came back to its senses and everything returned to the way it was supposed to be, except for two things. Ben and Ship.

Desperately Gwen used her Anodite powers to search for Ben or Ship's mana, but found none. "Their gone," Gwen whispered in shock as tears began streaming from her eyes.

The steel coating him quickly exited from around his body as Kevin wrapped his arms around Gwen to comfort her as she broke down and began sobbing hysterically.

As she cried into his chest he looked up towards where their friends had been devoured by the vortex. The shock of what had just happened now had him in its grip as he fought back the tears beginning to form in his eyes as well.

Once they had been enemies, then they had become friends, and within the year when he and Gwen would be married they would have been family. But now because of some lunatic it had all been torn apart.

Ben Tennyson, Earth's greatest hero was gone; tragically ripped from this world by a single random accident.

As he held Gwen even tighter doing all he could to comfort his distraught fiancé as he respectfully stared up at the spot where the teen hero and his Galvanic Mechamorph sidekick had disappeared. He shook his head sadly as he held Gwen close, he hated this so much, it just _**sucked!**_ With all the power they had at their fingertips all either of them could do was silently say goodbye, hoping that wherever Ben was now it was a better place.

Unseen by all Professor Paradox stood watching them from the shadows. Having witness the events that had just transpired he couldn't help but feel torn between lowering his head in sympathy for Gwen and Kevin's moment of anguish and giving a congratulatory smile for the teenage Ultimatrix wielder and his departure from this world. Not to mention what the future now held in store.

Ultimately the smile won over his sympathies and quickly stretched across his face. Of course he couldn't help but feel for Gwen and her fiancé; it was never easy to watch something like this happen. Having actually attended his own funeral he could only imagine what must have been running through their minds at the moment. For them Ben's story was over – or at least for the moment anyway. If only they knew just how far from over this story was. While this may have seemed like the end, in truth this was only the beginning. This was a story that would be continued, in more ways than one.

Author's notes:

For any Julie fans out there you have my grievances, but for the sake of what I have planned I thought it best to get rid of her in such a fashion. As for Ship I always thought he'd make a fun sidekick for Ben, given how they both transform and all.

Also some of you might be wondering about Ben's Anodite form. To begin with I chose the coloring because with the exception of AmpFibian and NRG all of Ben's aliens that involved energy were green which I attribute to the Omnitrix/Ultimatrix. As for Manafest's name it's inspired by an Anodite's excessive mana based power and is also dually a pun on the word Manifest, which by definition is to 1. Be shown something clearly/making something apparent/evident by displaying it clearly. 2. To reveal or appear as it is shown plainly to the eye.

Given an Anodite's clear style and mastery over mana – the all but invisible energy of magic apparently existent in all living things according to Verdona– I thought it was a fitting name.

Be sure to review your thoughts of this story, seeing as this is my first official fanfic it would greatly appreciated.

And do be sure to check out the sequels Ben Titan, Ben Phantom, Ben Bender, Ben Wonder, and Ben Ten: Past Tense and Beyond.

This is Codecrash saying love, peace and chicken grease.


End file.
